Tracking the M9 Slide Failures

Revisiting the Controversy surrounding the Military's Beretta

The following is an updating of a two-part report, "Tracking The Dispute Over M9 Pistol Slide Failures," published in the 19 and 26 April 1991 editions of Gun Week.

Beretta USA's continued insistence that catastrophic slide failures of their military Model 92 SB/F (M9) pistols were caused by over-pressure ammunition has had grave doubt cast upon it by official reports obtained from the Armed Forces.

The M9 was carried by most non-special operations troops during the recently concluded Persian Gulf War… a fact dramatically confirmed the week of 25 February when TV news audiences viewed footage of an Army officer using his Beretta to prod supplicating Iraqi soldiers scrambling out of their bunker to surrender.

But reports have also surfaced that the supposedly retired Government Model .45 ACPs were used extensively throughout the Persian Gulf, primarily by Army Special Forces and Force Recon Marines, as well as various reserve units who first formed Desert Shield forces.

There have been additional reports of other M9 problems, from the shearing off of barrel lugs, to persistent cracks in the alloy frames… the very difficulty which purportedly disqualified SIG Sauer from being awarded the military's contract for 315,930 9mm sidearms. Ironically, the Department of the Army's 14 January 1985 memorandum stated that…

Beretta 92 SB-F … was judged to have the lowest overall costs and provides further savings over the life of the weapon due to durability advantages.

A 4 December 1990 Joint Services Operational Requirements Committee meeting in Quantico, Virginia, left one attendee (who requested anonymity) with the distinct impression that the military would be looking for a new pistol "somewhere down the road."

"Let's just say that there were more services than not who were displeased with the M9," our source revealed guardedly.

Despite clear indications that the slide failure fault is one of Beretta metallurgy rather than ammunition, a greater controversy concerns who must bear the expense of making sure that the United States Military has a safe and reliably functioning pistol.

"Right now nobody's admitting anything," a ranking military officer observed, "but the real fight's going to come later over who's going to have to ante up for all the problems. It'll almost certainly wind up in a protracted court action."

No Fatalities

Whatever corrective action is currently underway appears to be at taxpayer expense, as no one has yet forced the manufacturer to make good on more than 160,000 possibly defective pistols which have resulted in significant injury to at least five members of the military since deliveries of the 92 SB/F began six years ago.

The most recent documented field injury, necessitating 28 facial stitches and repair of a broken tooth, occurred in January 1989 to a U.S. Marine training with the U.S. Air Force Military Police at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. Despite rumors on the gun shop grapevine, there have been no confirmed fatalities as a result of the Beretta's slide
failures.

Dissatisfaction with the Beretta M92 design has not been limited to the U.S. Military, for the FBI's Firearms Training Unit was clearly less than enthusiastic about the Beretta slide failure situation. AN FBI/Department of Justice 1987-1988 Report on Semi-automatic Pistols, item number five in a list of ten "bad" aspects of the Beretta was simply "Slide separations (*see commentary)."

That commentary noted:

…the Beretta M92 (was) built to U.S. Army specifications. One should understand that these specifications were:

Only the frame has a specified service life.

That service life is 5,000 rounds.

The slide is a disposable part.

99% of the military pistols will fire only 80 rounds per year.

III. Beretta failures:

The Beretta 92 has experienced several slide separations where the slide breaks at the locking lug notches. The back half of the slide strikes the shooter. Two Navy SEALS have suffered severe facial injuries.

One particularly disturbing piece of new information was included in this "For Law Enforcement Distribution Only" document:

2. The second one failed during testing for barrel life at Fort Dix, NJ, in February 1988. This gun was magnafluxed at 6,000 rounds and no cracks or fatigue discovered. AT {sic} 6,007 rounds the slide separated.

Other sections of that commentary note that Beretta had…

…engineered a fix which prevents the separated slide from leaving the weapon-it does not prevent the slide from separating. … Beretta says the problem is due to the use of experimental, over pressure ammunition, (specifically 147 gain subsonic).

In February 1990, Beretta without fanfare commenced shipping all of its Models 92 with that modification, but made no accommodation for retrofitting existing civilian or law enforcement models.

"While we will eventually be selling the large hammer pivot pin as a part," a source inside Beretta told the Intelligencer in the 13 April 1990 Gun Week, "slides without the cut will not fit on a pistol with a large pivot pin." The same source acknowledged that there were now nine documented military slide failures, but stuck to the official Beretta line that the source of the problem was ammunition related.

Picatinny Arsenal (NJ) documents, dated respectively "28 March 1989" and "April 1989," however, are quite specific in identifying the problems with the M9 as being metallurgical in nature.

The first, encoded "MMB-01-89" and entitled "Fracture Toughness and Charpy Impact Strength of Six Navy Slides M9 Beretta Pistol (Italy)," dealt with six slides picked at random from lot numbers…

…close to the lot numbers of two Navy slides which failed catastrophically during field use after firing at relatively low round counts, i.e., less than 5,000 rounds.

The results were revealing as researchers were able to fully characterize the microstructure, the sulphide morphology, and the element added for sulphide shape control in the AISI 8640 re-sulpherized steel.

"Of the six slides tests, five exhibited low fracture toughness…" while "all six slides exhibited the same hardness." So it was not a matter of detecting potential catastrophic slide failures with anything as relatively simple as the Rockwell hardness test.

One of the most significant differences found to correlate with the differences in fracture toughness … was the sulphide (MnS) shape and the chemical element added to control sulphide shape. For example, the sulphides found in the low toughness slides were globular and contained tellurium (Te) as an additive (to control the shape.

The results of this work have shown that there are two types of slide materials currently being manufactured at Beretta, Italy; steel treated with Te (globular structure) which is accompanied by low fracture toughness and steel treated with Ca (longitudinal stringers) which is accompanied by high fracture toughness. It should be noted that the sulphide morphology correlation has been observed for all slides examined since the inception of the investigation of the Beretta slide failures (total of 31 slides). This result was reported to the Army Science Board during a briefing in February '89. (Emphasis added). It was also reported in past work done (as far back as April '88) in the Materials Evaluation Section, AET-M. The latter work demonstrated conclusively that the Beretta slides represent two distinct populations: one with a low Kq (fracture toughness) of about 40 ksi V in. and one with a high Kq of about 71 ksi V in.

A second document,
"Fracture Toughness Evaluation of Three Failed M9 Pistol Slides", states…

While slides with adequate failure toughness do eventually fail, they do so at considerably higher round counts, and more importantly, they do so only after a plainly visible crack grows, warning the shooter of the impending
failure.

All three broken slides in this test procedure were found to contain the element tellurium, leading the researchers to conclude:

The use of tellurium as an additive to control sulphide shape results in low fracture toughness. This finding is consistent with previous work.

There is an association between low round count/low fracture toughness and catastrophic failures. This has also been found in previous work.

The exact role of Te with respect to low fracture toughness is currently being investigated.

As readers will learn, high levels within the Military Establishment have been aware of the Tellurium Postulation for the past two years, but the issue has become one of everyone scrambling to cover their respective backsides rather than resolving the unhappy situation.

The conclusion of this report will appear shortly, along with some updates and annotations.

The Beretta M9 pistol actually began life in 1975 as the original Model 92. It became the Model 92S in 1977 when the safety-decocking lever was moved from the frame to the slide. The next step in the pistol's evolution was to move the magazine release from the butt of the grip-frame to the common American location just behind the triggerguard. This model was called the 92SB. In 1983 during the completion of the XM9 tests the pistol took on its 92F designation when Beretta added a "combat triggerguard," a hard-chrome barrel and the Bruniton matte-black finish. At the same time they made the safety/decocking lever bi-latteral and added a reversible magazine-release button to satisfy the military's ambidextrous requirement.

On 14 January 1985 Pietro Beretta of Italy was awarded a multi-year contract for delivery of 315,930 pistols. The contract award stipulated that production of the weapon must transition from Italian to US production after two years. The US Army was the lead service in this program.

The 9 X 19mm round fired by the M9 is designated "M882 ball" ammo. This 124-grain round has been manufacturerd on contract to the U.S. Military by Winchester, Federal and IMI.

Rumor has been rife for almost a quarter of a century about how the Beretta was ultimately selected as the M9 over the SIG-Sauer P226, and while best information is that it was a matter of the contract bidding process, there have been hy­poth­e­ses about quids pro quo involving U.S. missile base leases in Italy and intel on organized crime families in the U.S.A.

One of those involved in the matter was said to be Chairman of the House Appropriations Com­mit­tee defense sub­com­mit­tee Joseph P. Addabbo (D, NY) who died after a cancer-related illness in April 1986, be­fore he could be targeted by a Congressional investigation.

M9/Beretta Update

Beretta USA says its 9mm military sidearms are do­ing well and performed reliably during Operation Desert Storm but certain branches within the mil­i­tary remain unhappy with the pistol.

Last summer, the Marine Corps and the Navy made formal requests of the Secretary of Defense to be released from the M9 program. The re­quest, viewed by almost everyone as politically sensitive, has finally drawn a reply from the Assistant Secretary of the Army, the branch charg­ed with acquiring the service pistol.

The Corps will get be delivered 30,000 M9 pistols, whether it wants them or not. Marine Corps sources tell us that the nearly $6.5 million worth of pistols will be warehoused indefinitely.
The last injury from a slide separating from the pistol was in 1989. No civilian or law enforce­ment injuries have been reported.

Firearms Business
15 May 1992

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